 The Professional Approach. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Joelle Peebles. The Professional Approach by Charles Leonard Harness and Theodore Lockhart-Thomas. Quote, The trials of a patent lawyer are usually highly technical tribulations and among the greatest is the fact that inventors are only slightly less predictable than their inventions. Unquote. Sometimes, said Helix Spartleton Esquire, a patent case gets away from you. As the attorney in the case, you never quite see it the same as everybody else. You stand isolated and alone, unable to persuade the patent examiners, the board, the courts, possibly even the inventor, to accept your view of the case. Nothing you do or say matches anyone else's thinking and you begin to wonder what's the matter with everyone. I nodded. This was my favorite time of day. It was early evening in Washington, D.C., and my boss, Helix Spartleton, patent attorney extraordinary, was relaxing. His feet were up on one corner of his desk, his cigar was in the contemplation position, and the smoke curled slowly toward the ceiling. His office was a good room in which to relax. It was filled with fine, old, well-scratched furniture, and the walls were lined with books. And there was the comfortable picture of Justice Holmes on the wall looking down with rare approval on what he saw. Susan, our secretary, had made the last coffee of the day, and had kicked off her shoes, the better to enjoy it. The three of us just sat in the deepening dusk and talked, but didn't even turn on a light. It was a shame I wasn't paying close attention to Mr. Spartleton. I said, Yes, I know what you mean about other people's not seeing things the same way you do. I've seen something like it at work with some of my friends just before they get married. They think their brides are just about the most beautiful women in the world when they are really quite homely, wouldn't even hold a candle to our Susan here. Mr. Spartleton looked at me, and then at Susan, and Susan looked at him, and then at me, in that sober, wide-eyed way she has. And then they looked at each other and smiled. I guess they realized that I had said something pretty funny. Mr. Spartleton said, I understand why you think of the situation in terms of brides, but I always think of it in terms of a proud father who sees nothing but perfection in his newborn son. Yes, I said, that's a good way to put it, too. There are, he continued, through a cloud of gentle smoke, two different ways in which patent case can get away from the attorney. The first doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it has a tendency to set the world on fire. That's the case that has true merit to it, high invention, if you will, but the invention is so subtle that nobody can see its importance. Only the attorney who wraps the case around his heart can appreciate its vast potential. He goes through the prosecution before the patent office, and possibly before the courts, shouting high praises of the invention. But all the tribunals turn a deaf ear. Sometimes the attorney finally reaches Nirvana. The invention comes into its own. It shakes the world, just as the attorney had always known it would. I nodded and said, Elias Howe and his sewing machine, McCormick and his reaper, Colt and his pistol. Mr. Sparrelton had taught me well. The other way is more common, he continued. There the attorney never sees the case in its true light. He is blinded by something in it and thinks it is greater than it is. He wastes a lot of time trying to persuade everybody that this very ordinary invention is the wonder of the decade. He thinks of the invention the way a father does of a wayward son. He sees none of its faults, only its virtues, and he magnifies those. I shifted into a more comfortable position in my deep chair. Mr. Sparrelton must have thought I was going to say something. He looked at me and added hastily. Or rather, as you'd have it, the way a bridegroom looks at his prospective bride. That better? Oh yes, those fellows are really blinded. They just can't see anything the way it really is. Mr. Sparrelton said, Most patent attorneys are unable to tell the difference between the two ways a case can get away from them. Once they get caught in it, they always think that nobody else agrees with them, because nobody else understands the case. It is quite a blow when it turns out that they are the only one who has been wrong all along. Yes, sometimes an understanding of the facts is as difficult as an understanding of the law. Yes, I said sleepily. Sure must be. If I had known better that evening, I would never have allowed myself to get so sleepy. I should have listened for the meaning in Mr. Sparrelton's words instead of merely listening to the words themselves. I have seen patent examiners act that way. They hear the words, but the meaning does not come through. We locked the doors and went home then. How I wish I had listened. Dr. Nathaniel Marchere is unquestionably the greatest organic chemist the world has seen since Emil Fisher. His laboratories in Alexandria, Virginia constantly pour out a host of exceedingly important inventions. The chemists, physicists, physical chemists, and biologists who work under him are all dedicated men and women, gifted with that scientific insight that so often produces simple solutions to great problems. Dr. Marchere and his people are the principal clients of the firm of Helix Sparrelton patent attorney, and as such they are very important to me. Nevertheless, I always get a queasy feeling in my stomach when Dr. Marchere excitedly calls up Mr. Sparrelton, and Mr. Sparrelton turns him over to me. Dr. Marchere is a very nice person, not at all mad as people are prone to say. He is tall and gaunt and slightly wallied, and he seems to live in a great flopping laboratory smock, and his hair is always wild, and he seems to look around you rather than at you, but he is a very nice person and not at all mad. His main trouble is he does not understand the workings of the United States patent system. After I have explained to him the operation of the patent law on some particular situation, Dr. Marchere frequently begins to mutter to himself as if I were no longer in the same room with him, and I find this most discouraging, as if this were not bad enough many of Dr. Marchere's scientists have acquired the same habit. It was a bright fall morning when this particular call came through. I hadn't heard the phone ring, nor did I hear Mr. Sparrelton answer it in response to Susan's buzz, but some sixth sense brought me upright in my chair when I heard Mr. Sparrelton say, well, how are things out in the Washington suburbs this morning? I felt the hairs tingle at the base of my neck, and I knew that Mr. Sparrelton was talking to Dr. Marchere. I heard, certainly, why don't I send Mr. Saddle out? He's worked with Callaghan before on that pigeon-scarer case, as I recall, and the two of them can decide what to do. That sound all right? I'm afraid it sounded all right, because there was some chit-chat, and then the sound of the phones banging into its cradle and Mr. Sparrelton's booming voice. Oh, Mr. Saddle, will you come in here a moment, please? I took a quick swallow of milk of Magnesia, and excellent and acid, and went in. Mr. Sparrelton was busy, so he came right to the point. They've got some kind of problem out at the Marchere Laboratory. Don't know whether to file a patent application right now, or wait until the invention is more fully developed. Will you hop out there and get them straightened out? Callaghan is the chemist, and you know him pretty well. I certainly did. Callaghan's name always reminded me of the time I took testimony in Sing Sing Prison on a Callaghan application in interference. But I nodded numbly, and went back to my office, and finished the bottle of milk of Magnesia, and caught a cab to the Marchere Laboratory. It was cool in the lab, and the air smelled faintly of solvents. I liked the smell, and I sniffed it deeply, and tried to distinguish one from the other. My chemistry professor had often told me that I had the best nose you'd run across in 25 years of teaching. I picked out the pungent aromatic odor of toluene and the hospital smell of diethyl ether, and I thought I could detect the heavy odor of laurel alcohol. Underneath them all was a rich sweet smell that I had smelled before, but I couldn't tell what it was. I decided it was lactone, and I'd let it go at that. I nodded as I went past the receptionist, and her smile made me feel uncomfortable again, just as it always did. There was too much of a leer in it. I never stopped to tell her where I was going. I just went in unannounced. I went up the stairs and down the hall to Callaghan's lab, next to Dr. Marchere's. I went in. Henry Callaghan stood at a bench, pouring a colorless liquid down a chromatographic column. He looked over at me and said, Well, Carl, Saddle, how are you, man? Nice to see you. Callaghan was a big man, heavy set with bright blue eyes and a shock of light brown hair. For all his bulk he moved lightly as befitted a former stroke on the pen crew. I was fond of Callaghan, even with all the trouble his inventions caused me. I knew he couldn't help it. I said, Hello Henry, how have you been? And we exchanged some more amenities. Finally he said, Carl, we have quite a problem here, and we don't know what to do about it. Here's the situation. I swallowed and took out my notebook and pencil, and laid my pocket slide rule in front of me. I always put the slide rule out where the inventor can see it to remind him that he is talking to another technical man, not just a lawyer. This helps make him stick to the facts. I don't need the rule with Callaghan, but have it is hard to break. Callaghan said, Some time ago I made a polyester, used a dipic acid, and amino alcohol. On a hunch I dropped in an aluminum alcohol and pushed the polymerization along with both ultraviolet and heat. Got a stiff gel out of the pot and drew it into a quarter of a pound of fibers. I only had time to determine that the fibers were amorphous. No time to draw them further to see if they would develop crystallinity. I put them in an open mouth jar, which I later found had been used to store mercury. One evening I took them out and found they had developed crystallinity on standing. Furthermore, the fibrous ends had split, and the split ends seemed to be tacky, seemed unnatural to me to make a sheet of paper out of it. I nodded as I worked furiously on my notes. All of Marshares people talked that way. They did the most fantastic things sometimes, and then talked about them as if anyone would have done the same thing. I had complained about this oddity to Mr. Spartleton when I first came to work for him. I was used to inventions that were made in understandable ways. He had smiled and asked me to quote the last sentence of 35 USC 103, the statute that set forth the conditions for patentability. It was a good thing I had memorized the statute. I recited the last sentence, patentability shall not be negative by the manner in which the invention is made. Well, here it was again. I asked Callahan, did you make a sheet of paper out of it? Sure did. Made a hand sheet in a 12 x 12 inch mold, pressed it out, dried it, then got busy again so I couldn't test it for a week. When I did, I started working nights to see if I could duplicate my results. Just finished this morning. Here's the hand sheet, the second one. He handed me a sheet of paper, snow white in color. I put aside my pencil and notebook to examine it. As I took it in my hand, it was obvious that it was something unusual. It was softer than a cleansing tissue and probably even more flexible. I rubbed it between my fingers and it had the most remarkable feel of any paper I had ever felt. Soft and clinging and cool and exceedingly pleasant. I knew the paper chemists call this property hand. Callahan's paper had the most remarkable hand I had ever seen. Teared in half, Callahan said. I took the sheet between my thumbs and four fingers and gingerly pulled expecting the light and soft sheet to part easily. Nothing happened. I pulled harder and still nothing. I smiled at Callahan, got a better grip and gave it a yank, then I twisted opposite corners around my fingers and frankly pulled at it. The absurd sheet refused to tear and I realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees and pulled until I heard my back muscles crack. I let out my breath explosively and looked helplessly at Callahan. He said, Don't feel bad, Carl. Nobody has been able to tear it. You mean it? I asked. I found myself puffing. I had not realized I was straining so hard. Yup. That paper has a tensile of 2800 pounds per square inch and a tear strength equally unbelievable. I looked at the little sheet and great possibilities began to occur to me. Clothing, I said. Great heavens think what this will do for the clothing industry. No more weaving. Just run this stuff off on a paper machine at 500 feet per minute. I stopped and looked at Callahan and said you will be able to make it on a paper making machine, won't you? As far as I know. Good, I said. When can we try it in the pilot plant? Well, that's where the problem comes in, Carl. I have to leave for the west coast tomorrow to be gone for six months. There's nobody else around here to take it through the pilot plant. What's worse, one of my technicians left this morning to take a job with Leif Rood Consultants Incorporated in Boston. The technician is an ethical man and all that, but I'm afraid the word will be out on this paper now. My heart sank. Callahan said I've already started another of my technicians, John Bostick, on the process to make certain he can repeat my work, what he can do for a few months around here. The laboratories have never been so busy. What do you think we ought to do? The answer was obvious. We've got to file a patent application right away. It isn't ready to file, but we've got to do it anyway. Callahan said oh, we're in good shape, we know it works. I nodded and said what acids other than a dipic will work? Oh, azoleic, subasic, a few others, I suppose. What else other than amino alcohols? What other catalysts? Do you really need mercury vapor? Will some other metallic vapor do? What about temperature variations in making the polyester? How long a cure time? How much ultraviolet? Will the fibers be better if you draw them more? Can you get those tacky fiber ends in any other way? Can you improve them? What about the sheet making conditions? Does oxygen in the air catalyze? Can you get those hands up and say okay, okay, we don't know anything about it. But we're not going to find out these things until we open a research program and we can't open a program for at least 6 months. In the meantime, that technician may I held up my hands this time and he fell quiet. We stood silently until I asked all the information in your notebooks, Henry. He nodded and I continued. Well, I'll be back tomorrow to talk to you and Bostick. We'll just have to file a patent application on what we have. We chatted a while about his work on the west coast and then we shook hands and I left. I had a few moments to think in the cab before I talked with Mr. Spartleton. Here I was in that situation that a patent attorney dreads. I had an incomplete invention, one that required a great deal of work before it could be filed, yet I had to file it now in incomplete condition. With it all, here was a most significant invention, one that would make the world take notice. This was one of the rare ones I could feel it in my bones. It was obviously an industry founder, a landmark invention on a par with the greatest, even in its incomplete condition. By golly, I was going to do a job on this one. Mr. Spartleton was in a bad mood when I entered his office. I didn't have a chance to say a thing before he bellowed at me. Mr. Saddle, do you know what a plasticizer is? By a yes. It is a material generally a solvent that softens and renders another material more flexible. That's right, his fists banged on the desk. Yet here, he waved an office action at me, is an examiner who says that the term plasticizer is indefinite, and I must give a list of suitable plasticizers when he knows that Rule 118 forbids me to put in such a list. Can you imagine? He is saying in effect that a chemist does not know what a plasticizer is, and I must take him by the hand and teach him something he learned in freshman chemistry. It has nothing to do with the invention, either. I am claiming a new kind of lens holder, and I point out that the interior of the holder may be coated if desired with the plasticized synthetic resin coating. My, I don't know what the office is coming to. The patent office is the only institution in the world that does not know the meaning of the phrase room temperature. Someday... What's the matter, Mr. Saddle? I had pulled up a chair and hunched down in it. Mr. Spartleton recognized the symptoms. He put down the offending office action and settled back and waited for me to tell him my troubles. I said, I've got a hot invention. It is a paper that will replace cloth, strong, flexible, cheap, too. We've only made one version of it, though, and I have to file an application right away with one of Callahan's technicians left and we can't risk waiting. He nodded, and I went on, describing to him all the details of the invention and the situation. When I finished, I stared morosely at the floor. Mr. Spartleton said, What's the problem? File a quick application now and later on when you have more information abandon it and file a good full-scale application. I looked at him in surprise and said, But somebody else has just as much information as we have and he may start to experiment right away. That technician knows as much as we do. In another six months they could file a complete application and beat us out on dates. They'd be the first with the complete application. Well, what do you propose to do about it? I shrugged. I'll have to make up as good an application as I can right now. We'll make some guesses at how the research would go and put it in. Look, you don't know. He began ticking off the points on his fingers. If you really need the tri-alcohol aluminum or the mercury-treated glass surface or the heat or the radiation or any combination of them you don't have any idea of the conditions that are necessary to produce this paper. I know. All you've got is a single example that works. If you make your claims broader than that one example, that's for lack of disclosure. This is basic in patent law. Ex parte Cameron, Rule 71 and 35 USC 112 will do for a starter. But I hadn't worked with Mr. Sparrelton for nine years for nothing and he had taught me how to play this game pretty well. I sat up straighter in my chair and said, Yes, but in Ex parte Dick and Moncriv, the disclosure of nitric acid as a shrinking agent for yarns was to support a claim for shrinking agents broadly. The claim did not have to be limited to nitric acid. Only because nitric acid was already known to be a shrinking agent for yarns. I said, Well, a dipic acid is a known polyester ingredient. And all the other ingredients? I did then what he had carefully taught me to do when I was losing an argument. I quickly shifted to another point. In Ex parte tab, it merely disclosed raisins and raisin oil, but that was enough to support claims to dried fruit and edible oil. But in that case the Board of Appeals said they allowed such terminology only because the equivalency of the substances could be foreseen by those skilled in the art, foreseen with certainty too. Can you say that about your substances? I hesitated before I answered and that was all he needed to take over. A large number of ingredients was recited in Inray Ellis and since there was no evidence to show that they all would not work the applicant was allowed broad claims but you'd have trouble making your guest ad ingredients stick. In the case of Coronacord Tire Company versus Doven the Court said the patentee was entitled to his broader claims because he proved he had tested a reasonable number of the members of a chemical class. Have you? I started to answer but Mr. Spartleton was in full swing now and he said to me No sir, you haven't. You are not ready to put in broad claims on a half-baked invention. It was the half-baked that did it. Controlling my temper I rose to my feet and said in a purposeful and quiet voice. I think I see clearly how this case should be handled in this situation. I shall prepare it in that manner and file it and prosecute it and obtain a strong patent for this invention. I'll keep you posted. I turned and walked out. Just as I passed through the door I thought I heard him say softly Attaboy Carl. But I must have been mistaken. Mr. Spartleton never calls me Carl. I got right at it the very next morning. I opened the office myself and began studying my notes to see how broad a claim I could write for the tear-proof paper case. I listed all the ingredients and adjacent columns with all the possible substitutes I could think of. I didn't even know it when Susan arrived at the office, stood in my doorway for a moment, and then tiptoed away. Later on Mr. Spartleton looked in on me and I wasn't aware of that either. It was ten o'clock before I finally came up for air and then I dashed out to the Marshare Laboratory for another talk with Callahan. I explained how I was going to handle the case to make sure we got a good broad patent application into the patent Can you do that, he asked? Oh yes. We can put in all the things we think will work, but if we are wrong we are in some degree of trouble. But I feel that with both of us working on this we ought to be able to turn out a good sound job. I'll keep sending you drafts out in San Francisco until we finally get one we think good enough to file. But we can't waste time. This is a hot one and we want to get it in as soon as possible. He shrugged his shoulders and we sat down to work on my lists. Neither one of us realized it when lunchtime came and went. But that's the way it is with world beater inventions. They sweep you along. Early that afternoon I dictated my first draft to Susan. Callahan and I went over the draft and then he left for San Francisco. The next time around we had to use air mail. With each new draft we added more to the basic information we had rounding out the invention in ever greater detail. I added example after example being careful to state them in the present tense. I did not want to give the impression that the examples had actually been run. In a month's time I checked with John Bostick. Bostick had been able to duplicate Callahan's work and we had three more flimsy diaphanous sheets that could not be torn by human hands. That was all I needed. Now I knew that anyone could duplicate the tear-proof paper and I had at least one good substantial working example for my patent application. The knowledge gave me greater confidence in the alternate materials and procedures that Callahan and I had dreamed up. I prepared a final draft containing 23 pages of detailed specification and 11 examples and topped it all off with 46 claims. It was a magnificent application considering what I had to start with. I handed it to Mr. Sparrelton and sat down to hear what he had to say about it. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he read it and I had the pleasure of seeing his cigar slowly swing outward until the glowing end was almost beneath one of his ears. This I knew was his amazed position and it was rare indeed that I or anyone else ever saw it. Mr. Sparrelton was a man who does not amaze easily. He finished and looked up at me and said, I assume this is the same invention you told me about last month? When I nodded he continued and I further assumed that you have no experimental data in addition to that you described last month? Again I nodded and he said, all of this is paperwork with the exception of example one? I nodded again and he put the draft down in front of him and stared at it. I began to grow uncomfortable in the silence then he said so softly that I could hardly hear him. I remember many many years ago answering the phone Cliff Norbright, great chemist, telling me he had smelled phenol when he heated ethylene chlorhydrin in the presence of Holmium-treated silica gel in a test tube. I wrote the greatest patent application of the age based on that evidence just like this one. He laid a hand on it and shook his head and smiled. There is no crude guesswork in this product, I said. The work has been duplicated in paper. I tell you, sir, there never has been anything like it. Why even Callahan? Yes, tell me about Dr. Callahan. He is usually a pretty conservative fellow. How does he feel about this completely untried product? I sat up straighter. This is not an untried product, Mr. Sparrelton. It has been made and duplicated. It has all the properties that the application says it has and Dr. Callahan has just as much faith in it as I have. Mr. Sparrelton looked at me and smiled, and slowly handed over the draft. Mr. Saddle, I wish you all the best in your prosecution of this case. Please call on me if there is anything I can do to help. In any way, don't hesitate to call on me. I stood up and took the draft and turned to go, but Mr. Sparrelton thrust his hand out. I shook it and said, is anything wrong with it? Not that I am able to see, Mr. Sparrelton did a most remarkable job and bespeaks of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and skill. You have come a long way to be able to write such an application. I didn't know what to say, so I smiled and bobbed my head and walked out, still looking at him and smiling, which made it necessary for me to walk sideways, and thus made me look, I suppose, somewhat like a crab. Susan put the case in final form. Then we filed the case and things got back to normal with me. It was a great relief not to have the strain on me night and day. That's the trouble with an important case. You live with it too much. It was seven months before I got the first office action in the case. I read the first few paragraphs and they were quite normal. They rejected the case in the usual manner by citing prior patents that had nothing to do with my application. This kind of thing was just part of the game of prosecution in which the patent examiner makes rejections because that is what he's supposed to do no matter what the invention. They don't have to make much sense. But then came a paragraph that went way beyond good sense and proper rejection technique. It said, These portions are superfluous and should be deleted. Ex parte ball 1902 CD 1326. The specification is unnecessarily Prolex throughout and contains an unduly large number of embodiments. Ex parte Blakeman 98 OG 791. Shortening is required. I didn't wait. I grabbed the file of the case and almost ran over to the patent office to straighten out the examiner on a few things. As usual Herbert Crone was the examiner so I charged up to his desk and immediately began explaining to him the importance of the tear-proof paper case. He seemed to pay no attention to me but I knew him. He was listening. When I finally paused to let him say something he looked at me quizzically and said, Mr. Saddle, aren't you aware of the notice of October 11, 1955? I looked at him blankly and said, What's that? It says that interviews with examiners are not to be held on Fridays except in exceptional circumstances. I gulped and said, Is today Friday? He pushed his desk talent or toward me. It was Friday all right and the thirteenth at that. I was too embarrassed to speak and I got up and began to walk out. Mr. Crone called after me. In the case, Mr. Saddle, I'll expect to see you the first thing Monday. I nodded and left. By Monday my embarrassment had not diminished. I had really done an unheard of thing in patent prosecution. In patent prosecution the patent attorney has six months to respond to an office action. Since attorneys carry a docket of cases adapted to fill all their time an attorney in most instances requires the full six months to respond to an outstanding office action. Industrial attorneys with relatively light dockets might respond in five months time. This may also happen when the attorney is trying to get a little ahead so he can go on a vacation. There are rare instances of record when an attorney had taken some action in three or four months but here in the tear-proof paper case I had actually gone for an interview on the very first day. I couldn't possibly go back the following Monday. I had to go back until Tuesday. By that time I had gone over the entire rejection and planned my complete response to the examiner. I sat down with Mr. Chrome on Tuesday morning and talked steadily for fifteen minutes before I realized he was watching me instead of paying attention to the case. I said, what's the matter? He said, wonderingly, I've never seen you like this before. You're acting almost as unreasonably as an inventor. In the case, you should relax Mr. Saddle. You are here as an advocate, not as a midwife. I don't think that's very funny Mr. Chrome. I proceeded to explain the high merit of the case and he seemed to listen then. Before I left, he promised to give the case careful consideration. This was all he ever promised so I thanked him and went back to my office. I filed my amendment in the case the next day. It was eight months before I got the next application. Callahan returned in six months and immediately opened a project on the tear-proof paper. The two of us sat down together to determine the best way to handle the research. I said, Henry, we've already drawn up a complete research program. All we have to do is follow it. We have? Callahan was surprised. Sure. And I laid out in front of him a copy of our patent application and rifled through its pages. I was certain they all work. If they do, the program will be complete except for the product itself and commercial production. Our patent application will make the best research guide we could get. I certainly said Callahan. We have already spent a great deal of time working out all kinds of substitute and equivalent reactions. It's all here. Good. I'll set it up. Callahan began distributing the work to various groups and I went back to my office. Callahan and I went out to the laboratories to see how things were coming along. They came along well. From the beginning the actual results reached by the research teams matched the predictions we had made in our patent application. At the Friday afternoon meetings Callahan and I got into the habit of tossing pleased and knowing glances at each other as the streams of data continued to confirm our work. Several months rolled happily by. Then came a letter from the Boston. The letter said that their people understood that the Marshaire Laboratories had under development a remarkably strong paper and they would be very much interested in discussing licensing possibilities with us. I grabbed the letter and stormed into Mr. Sparrelton's office. Just read this. I almost yelled as I handed him the letter. This is the outfit that hired Callahan's technician. Now they know all about the tear-proof paper. That technician has told them everything. We ought to sue them, inducing disclosure of trade secrets or something. I added a great deal more as Mr. Sparrelton finished the letter and sat holding it, looking up at me as I paced back and forth in front of his desk. As I walked and talked, I finally became conscious of the fact that Mr. Sparrelton was waiting for me to finish. I could tell by the expression on his face. I pulled up in front of him and fell quiet. He said, Don't you feel it is significant that this letter was sent to us, lawyers, for Marchere Laboratories, rather than direct to the Laboratories? I thought about it, and he continued, Furthermore, as I understand it, the Laef rude people have a good reputation. That was right, too, and I saw what he was driving at. People of good reputation don't try to pull a fast one by immediately alerting the lawyers for the other side. In fact, when I stopped to think about it, I could see that they were bending over backwards to be careful in this situation. As Mr. Sparrelton said as he handed back the letter, I suggest you clear with Dr. Marchere and then make arrangements to talk to these people and see if you can negotiate some kind of profitable license. Marchere is pretty fully committed right now, and I don't think he has time to exploit this paper, even if it turns out to amount to something. I looked at him aghast that he should still be doubtful of the paper at this late stage of the game. He saw my look and said, Oops, I mean this milestone is a technology once it is announced to the world. That seemed better, more to the point. I called Dr. Marchere and found that Mr. Sparrelton was right as usual. Dr. Marchere would welcome a beneficial licensing arrangement. I then called the Rude Associates on the phone. It seemed more expeditious than writing. I set up a meeting date as soon as possible, one week away. The day before I left for Boston, I checked in with Callahan and I was certain all of our data were correct. We went over every aspect of the tear-proof paper case. I picked out a dozen good samples of the paper of varying composition and thickness and put them in my briefcase along with a copy of the patent application. I had decided that I might even show them a copy of the application if it might help show what a marvelous discovery we had made. Callahan and I shook hands solemnly and he wished me the best of luck. I went back to my office and our final quick-check got interested in Sable's book and went home without my briefcase. There was no harm done. My plane did not leave until ten in the morning and I had planned to go back to the office anyway. I said goodbye to Susan and Mr. Sparrelton, retrieved my briefcase from over by the radiator where Susan had put it the night before and caught the plane. It was a cold, damp day and the threat of rain was in the air. In Boston, I caught a cab in one of the new laboratories of Rood Associates. Dr. Rood himself was at the meeting along with half a dozen of his associates. Dr. Rood was a small man, dapper, totally unlike a research chemist and his speech and manner were as impeccable as his dress. Only his hands were a giveaway. They were stained with yellow and black stains that looked completely out of place on the man. Dr. Rood opened the meeting with an explanation concerning the technician he had hired two years earlier. Just a week ago, said Dr. Rood, we put him on a problem of paper chemistry. He told us that the properties we sought and more had already been found by your laboratory. He said no more and we would not have allowed him to say any more except that you were the patent lawyer who was working on the case. That is all we know about it. We hope you have something of mutual interest but we don't know any more than what I have told you. I said thank you, Dr. Rood. I understand how it was. I assure you it never crossed our minds down in Washington that anything could have been out of line in any matter whatsoever. The assembled group smiled and I smiled back and we all felt friendly with one another. Dr. Rood cleared his throat and said well is there anything you can tell us about this tear proof about a paper having some of these very interesting properties? I said there is a great deal I can tell you about the paper we have but suppose I let you see some specimens before I say anything. There is nothing like the actual goods themselves to do most of the talking. We all laughed as I took a half dozen 12 by 12 hand sheets out of my briefcase and passed them around the table. I watched the chemist finger the sheets savoring their soft coolness and I heard the whispered comments good hand, excellent softness, fine color, and a few others. Dr. Rood said breaking samples Mr. Saddle do you mind if we tear them? Well you can see that this was the question I was waiting for. I sat back and allowed a slight smile to play over my face. I said oh no gentlemen go ahead and tear them. I saw several of the people take the sheets between their thumbs and forefingers and gently pull. I saw the sheets tightened momentarily and then as if the sheets were no more than ordinary cleansing tissue I saw the fibers pull apart and the man easily tore the sheet in half. I felt the blood drain from my face and it seemed to me that my pounding heart must have been visible right through my clothes. I swallowed and tried to say something although I had no clear idea of what I was going to say. Words would not come. I leaned over and took another sheet from my briefcase and tugged at it. It torn half with practically no effort. I took another, same results and still another. I dimly realized that all the people were staring at me but I wasn't concerned. I knew something must be wrong with all the specimens. Possibly I had placed regular cleaning tissues in my briefcase or maybe Susan but even as I thought it I knew such a mistake was impossible. I reached over and tried tearing one of the sheets I had passed out to the others. It tore into quarters as easily as it had torn into halves. That finished me. I leaned back and looked around at the silent group and wondered what Mr. Spottelton would have said at a time like that. I started to smile and discovered that my original smile was still frozen on my face. I stood up and began retrieving the torn papers. They passed them back to me without saying anything. I replaced them in my briefcase, closed it, said gentlemen Christmas falls on Friday this year and walked out. It was raining outside but I scarcely noticed. I hailed a cab to the Logan airport, changed my reservations, turned my plane and returned to Washington. It was a slow trip. Planes were stacked up in the rain at the Washington International Airport but I did not notice the passage of time. I was too stunned to think clearly but I kept trying. I got quite wet in Washington but I was in a hurry to see Mr. Spottelton and I did not bother to change my clothes. I burst into his office. He looked up and said, well I didn't expect to see you until tomorrow. How did? I sat on his desk and pulled out all the specimens and dumped them in front of him. I said, just look at these. This tear-proof paper has deteriorated. These specimens are useless. Right in front of all the rude chemists, they go bad. Most of them are new ones too. How can this be possible? Just look at them. Mr. Spottelton picked up one of the sheets, rubbed it and then tugged at it gently to tear it. It did not tear. He pulled harder and then harder and it did not tear. I gave him in disbelief and said, oh Mr. Spottelton this is no time to play games with me. I took one of the sheets and yanked it and almost cut my fingers. I bent over and put my hands on my knees to get better leverage just as I had the very first time but the sheet would not tear. I threw it on the desk and tried another with the same results. One after another I ran through them all while Mr. Spottelton sat back and watched me. I was wild-eyed when I finished. Mr. Spottelton said, Mr. Saddle would you mind telling me what has happened? I pulled up a chair and groped for my voice and finally got the story out. He looked at me strangely tried to tear another of those miserable little sheets and said, Mr. Saddle do you feel all right? In Boston I had been completely deflated and bewildered but now I was mad. I grabbed up the phone and called Callahan. I had barely started to pour out the story when he said, I'm glad you called Carl. Mr. Spottelton went out with me. He didn't want me to go anywhere alone. Callahan was holding two sheets up to the light when we went into his lab. He said, two identical sheets except for the moisture content. Moisture is the devil. One of these is dry. The other contains three percent moisture. Here's the dry one. He tore it in half effortlessly. Here's the moist one. And he strained at it but it would not tear. We just ran across this effect last night and finished checking it out an hour ago. Have you been to rude associates yet? I nodded. Too bad. We'll have to show them what can happen. Mr. Spottelton said, they already know. Callahan said, this kicks the whole thing in the head. The paper can never be more than a laboratory curiosity as far as we can see. The sun, a dry climate, heat, any of these things will drive off the moisture. And the paper will lose its strength. There's no way we can market a product like that when it might lose its strength at any time. I'm afraid the tear-proof paper must join the huge list of fine products that can't be sold because of one small flaw. It was Mr. Spottelton who steered me out of the labs. He slipped an arm through mine and said, you can refile the patent application and add this information about the moisture content. You ought to get the patent without too much trouble because the product is of no commercial value. I nodded as we stood in the rain waiting for a cab. He said, I never told you it happened in that phenol case of mine many years ago. It turned out that the man at the next bench had spilled a little phenol on the benchtop. That's what my inventor smelled. There never was any phenol in the test tube. We all fall over the facts of the case now and then. He squeezed my arm and the rain did not seem to fall quite as hard. End of the Professional Approach by Charles Leonard Harness and Theodore Lockhart-Thomas. Recording by Joelle Peebles. Test Rocket. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alex Clark. Test Rocket. By Jack Douglas. It's amazing how much you can learn about absolute strangers. If you just stop to think about the kind of an animal they'll put in a test rocket. Captain Baird stood at the window of the laboratory where the thousand parts of the strange rocket lay strewn in careful order. Small groups worked slowly over the dismantled parts. The captain wanted to ask, but something stopped him. Behind him, Dr. Johansson sat at his desk, his gnarled old hand tight about a whiskey bottle. The bottle the doctor always had in his desk, but never brought out except when he was alone and waited for Captain Baird to ask his question. Captain Baird turned at last. They are our markings, Captain Baird asked. It was not the question. Captain Baird knew the markings of the rocket testing station as well as the doctor did. Yes, the doctor said. They are our markings. Identical. But not our paint. Captain Baird turned back to the window. Ten minutes after launching, the giant test rocket had been only a speck on the observation screen. Captain Baird had turned away in disgust. A mouse, the captain had said. Unfortunate, a mouse can't observe, build, report. My men are getting restless, Johansson. We are ready, Captain, the doctor had said. It was twelve hours before the urgent call from central control brought the captain running back to the laboratory. The doctor was there before him. Professor Schultz wasted no time. He pointed to the instrument panel. A sudden shift, see for yourself, will miss Mars by a million and a quarter at least. Two hours later the shift in course of the test rocket was apparent to all of them and so was their disappointment. According to the instruments, the steering shifted a quarter of an inch. No reason shows up, Professor Schultz said. Fly in the metal, Dr. Johansson said. How far can it go? Captain Baird asked. Professor Schultz shrugged. Until the fuel runs out, which is probably as good as never. Or until the landing mechanism is activated by a planet-sized body. Course? Did you plot it? The doctor asked. Of course I did, Professor Schultz said. As close as I can calculate, it is headed for Alpha Centauri. Captain Baird turned away. The doctor watched him. Perhaps you will not be quite so hasty with your men's lives in the future, Captain? The doctor said. Professor Schultz was spinning dials. No contact, the professor said. No contact at all. That had been six months ago. Three more test rockets had been fired successfully before the urgent report came through from Alaskan Observation Post No. 4. A rocket was coming across the pole. The strange rocket was tracked and escorted by atomic armed fighters all the way to the rocket testing station, where it cut its own motors and gently landed. In the center of a division Captain, the doctor, and everyone else waited impatiently. There was an air of uneasiness. You're sure it's not ours, Captain Baird asked. The doctor laughed. Identical, yes, but three times the size of ours. Perhaps one of the Asian ones? No, it's our design, but too large. Much too large. Professor Schultz put their thoughts into words. Looks like someone copied ours. Someone, somewhere. It's hard to imagine, but true, nevertheless. They waited two weeks. Nothing happened. Then a radiation shielded team went in to examine the rocket. Two more weeks, and the strange rocket was dismantled and spread over the field of the testing station. The rocket was dismantled and the station had begun to talk to itself and look at the sky. Captain Baird stood now at the window and looked out at the dismantled rocket. He looked, but his mind was not on the parts of the rocket he could see from the window. The materials, they're not ours, the captain asked. Unknown here, the doctor said. The captain nodded. Those were our instruments? Yes, a whiskey bottle and a tight grip. They sent them back, the captain said. The doctor crashed the bottle hard against the desktop. Ask it, captain, for God's sake! The captain turned to face the doctor directly. It was a man, a full grown man. The doctor sighed as if letting the pent-up steam of his heart escape. Yes, it is a man. It breathes. It eats. It has all the attributes of a man, but it is not of our planet. It's speech. The captain began. That isn't speech, captain. The doctor broke in, breaking in sharply. It's only sound. The doctor stopped. He examined the label of his bottle of whiskey very carefully. Good brand of whiskey. He seems quite happy in the storeroom. You know, captain, what puzzled me at first? He can't read. He can't read anything, not even the instruments in that ship. In fact, he shows no interest in his rocket at all. The captain sat down now. He sat at the desk and faced the doctor. At least they had the courage to send a man, not a mouse doctor. A man. The doctor stared at the captain, his hand squeezing and unsqueezing on the whiskey bottle. A man who can't read his own instruments. The doctor laughed. Perhaps you too have failed to see the point. Like that stupid general who sits out there waiting for the men from somewhere to invade. Don't you think it's a possibility? The doctor nodded. Very good possibility, captain. But they will not be men. The doctor seemed to pause and lean forward. That rocket, captain, is a test rocket. A test rocket just like ours. Then the doctor picked up his whiskey bottle at last and poured two glasses. Perhaps a drink, captain? The captain was watching the sky outside the window. The end. That? Oh, that's a perspective machine. Well, not exactly, but that's what I call it. No, I don't know how it works. Too complicated for me. Carter could make it go, but after he made it, he never used it. Too bad. He thought he'd make a lot of money with it there for a while while he was working on it. Almost had me convinced, but I told him, get it to working first, Carter, and then show me what you can do with it better than I can do without it. I'm pretty well as is. Pictures selling good, even if I do make them all by guesswork, as you call it. That's what I told him. You see, Carter was one of them artists that think they can work everything out by formulas and stuff. Me? I just paint things as I see them. Never worry about perspective and all that kind of mechanical aids. Never even went to art school, but I do all right. Carter now was a different sort of artist. Well, he wasn't really an artist, more of a draftsman. I first got him in to help me with a series of real estate paintings I'd gotten order for. Big aerial views of land developments of buildings, roads and causeways. That kind of stuff. It was a little too much for me to handle alone because I never studied that kind of things, you know. I thought he'd do the mechanical drawings which should have been simple for anybody trained that way and I'd throw in the colors figures and trees and so on. He did fine. Job came out good, client was real happy. We made a pretty good amount on the job, enough to keep us for a couple of months without working afterwards. I took it easy. Fishing and so on. But Carter stayed here in the studio working on his own stuff. I let him keep an eye on things for me around the place and just dropped in now and then to check up. The guy was nuts on the subject of perspective. I thought he knew all there was to know about it already. But he claimed nobody knew anything about it, really. Said he'd been studying it for 30 years and the more he learned about it, the more there was to learn. He used to cover big sheets of paper with complicated diagrams trying to prove something or other to himself. I'd come into the studio and find him with thumbtacks and strings and stuff all over the place. He'd get big long rulers and draw lines to various points all over the room and end up with a little drawing of a cube about an inch square that anybody could do in half a minute without all the apparatus. Seemed pretty silly to me. Then he brought in some books on mathematics and physics and other things and a bunch of slide rules, calculators, and junk. He must have been a pretty smart guy to know how to handle all those things even if he was kind of dopey about other things. You know, women and fishing and sports and drinking. He was lousy at everything except working those perspective problems. Personally, I couldn't see much sense to what he was doing. The guy could draw all right already. So I asked him what more did he want? Let me see if I can remember what he said. I'm trying to get at things as they really are. Not as they appear, he said. I think those were his words. Art is an illusion. A bag of tricks. Reality is something else. Not what we think it is. Drawings are two-dimensional projections of a world that is not merely three but four-dimensional if not more, he said. Yeah, kind of a crackpot, Carter was. Just on that one subject, though, nice enough guy otherwise. Here, look at some of the drawings he made working out his formulas. Nice designs, huh? Might make good wallpaper or fabric plans. Real abstract. That's what people seem to like. See all those little letters scattered around among the lines? Different kinds of vanishing points they are. Carter claimed the whole world was full of vanishing points. You don't know what a vanishing point is? Let me see if I can explain. Come over to the window here. You see how that road out there gets smaller and smaller in the distance? Of course, the road doesn't really get smaller. It just looks that way. That's what we call a vanishing point in drawing. Simple, isn't it? Never could understand why Carter went to so much trouble working out all those ways to locate vanishing points. Me? I just throw them in wherever I need them. But Carter claimed that was wrong. Said they were all connected together some way, and he was going to work out a method to prove it. Here, here's a little gadget he made to help his calculations. Bunch of disks all pivoted together at the center. You're supposed to turn them around so the arrows point to the different figures and things. Here's the square root sign. I remember Carter telling me that. This one is the tangent function. Log, very short for logarithm. Oh, he had a bunch of that scientific stuff in his head all the time. Don't know whether he understood it all himself. He built this thing just before and put together the perspective machine there. Silly looking gadget, huh? All them pipes and wires and that little cube in the center? Don't try to touch it. It ain't really there. You just think it is. It's what Carter called a tetorac, or catarac. No, that ain't the right word. Something like that tesser something or other. There's a picture like it in one of Carter's books. Hurt your eyes to look at it, don't it? That's what Carter thought was going to make him a lot of fame and money, that perspective machine. I told him nobody had ever made a drawing machine yet that worked, but he said it wasn't supposed to make drawings. It was just supposed to give people a view of what reality really is instead of what they think it is. I don't know whether he expected to charge money to look through it or whether he was going to look through it himself and make some new kind of drawings and sell them. No, I can't tell you how it works. I said before I don't know. Carter only used it once himself. I came in here the day he finished it just as he was ready to turn it on. He was just putting the finishing touches on it. In a few minutes he told me I'll have the answer to a question that may never have been answered before. What is reality? Is the world a thing by itself and all we know illusion? Why do things grow smaller the farther away from us they appear? Why can't we see more than one side of anything at a time? What happens to the far side of an object? Does it cease to exist just because we can't see it? Are objects not present, nonexistent? Because artists draw things vanishing to points. Does that mean that they really vanish? A whack. That's what he was. Nice guy, but sort of rude. He kept saying more goofy things while he was finishing up the machine. About how he'd figured out that all we knew about vision and drawing and so on must be wrong. And that once he got a look at the real world he'd prove it. How about cameras I asked him. Take a picture with a camera and it looks just about the same as a drawing, don't it? That's because cameras are built to take pictures like we're used to seeing them, he said. Flat, horizontal slices of reality, without depth or motion. Even 3D moving pictures I asked. They're closer to reality, he admitted, but they are still only cross sections of it. The shutter of a movie camera is closed as much of the time as it is open. What happens in between the times it's open? You know he went on. People used to think matter and motion were continuous. But scientists have proved that they are discontinuous. Now some of them think time may be too. Maybe everything is just imaginary and appears to our senses in whatever way we want it to appear. We are so well trained that we see everything just as we are taught to see it by generations of artists, writers, and other symbol makers. If we could see things as they really are, what might happen? We'd probably all go nuts I told him. He just smiled. Well, here goes he said. It's finished. Now to find out who was right. The scientists and philosophers who say reality is forever unreachable or the artists who say there isn't any reality, that we make the whole thing up to suit ourselves. He moved one of those pointers you see there and squinted around at different scales and dials and then stepped back. That little tessie thing appeared real small at first, just a point you could hardly see it. I couldn't see anything else happening and thought he was going something else to the machine. I turned to look at Carter and saw his face was white as a sheet. Good God, he says. Just like that. Good God! That's all. Well, I says to him, who was right? The scientists or the artists? The artists, he sort of screeches. The artists were right all the time. There is no reality. It's all a fabric of illusion we've created ourselves. And now I've ripped a hole in that. He gives a strangled hoot and goes high tailing out of here like something was after him, jumps in his car and roars off down the road and disappears. No, I don't mean he really disappeared. Are you nuts? Just roared on down the road until he got so small I couldn't see him no more. The way things do when they go farther and farther away happens every day. That's what us artists mean by perspective. The machine? Well, I don't know what to do with it. If Carter ever comes back he might not like my getting rid of it. I was thinking maybe I'd put it in the hobby show at the county fair next week though. You notice how that funny looking cube inside there gets bigger every time you look at it? There, it's just doubled its size again, see? People at the fair ought to get a big kick out of that. No telling how big it'll get with all those people looking at it. Come on, let's go fishing. We'd better hurry or it'll be too late. End of Vanishing Point by C. C. Beck Recording by Dan Grzinski Buffalo, New York The Worshipers by Damon Knight This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite The Worshipers by Damon Knight Section 1 Destiny reached out a hand to Algernon Weaver but he was a timid man at first. In a strange world of Teranova there was much to be learned of Destiny and other things. It was a very different thing Algernon Weaver decided actually to travel in space. When you read about it or thought about it in terms of what you read it was more a business of going from one name to another. Al Galt is serious, Al Debaron to Epsilon Setti. You read the names and the descriptions that went with them and the whole thing that you really stopped to meditate on it became rather ordinary and prosaic and somehow more understandable. Not that he had ever approved. No. He had that at least to look back upon. He had seen the whole enterprise as pure presumption and had said so often. The heavens were the heavens and the earth was the earth that would have been better, much better for all concerned if it had been left that way. He had held that opinion. He did himself gratefully from the very beginning when it was easy to think otherwise. Afterward of course when the first starships came back with the news that space was a swarm with creatures who did not even resemble man and had never heard of him and did not think much of him when they saw him. Well, who but an idiot could hold any other opinion? If only the creator had not seen fit to make so many human beings in his image but without his common sense. Well, if he hadn't then for one thing Weaver would not have been where he was now staring out an octagonal porthole at an endless sea of diamond-pierced blackness with the empty ship humming to itself all around him. It was an entirely different thing, he told himself. There were no names and no descriptions and no feeling of going from one known place to another known place. It was more like it was like standing outdoors on a still summer night and looking up at the dizzying stars and then looking down to discover that there was no planet under your feet and that you were all alone in that alien gulf. It was enough to make a grown man cry and Weaver had cried, often in the empty red twilight of the ship feeling himself hopelessly and forever cut off, cast out and forgotten. But as the weeks passed a kind of numbness had overtaken him till now. When he looked out the porthole at the incredible depth of sky he felt no emotion but a disaproving regret. Sometimes he would describe himself to himself just to refute the feeling that he was not really here, not really alive, but his mind was too orderly and the description would come out so cold and terse. Algernon James Weaver, born 1942. Historian, civic leader, poet, teacher, philosopher, author of Development of the School System in Schenectady in Schohari County's New York, Pamphlet, 1975. An address to the women's clubs of Schenectady, New York, Pamphlet, 1979. Rimes of a Philosopher, 1981. Parables of a Philosopher, 1983. Reflections of a Philosopher, 1986. Born in Detroit, Michigan, son of a Methodist minister, educated in Michigan and New York public schools. BA, New York State University, 1959. MA, NYSU Extension, 1964. Unmarried. Surviving relatives. That was the trouble. It began to sound like an obituary and then the great humming metal shell would begin to feel like a coffin. Presumption. Pure presumption. None of these creatures should have been allowed to get loose among the stars, man least of all. It cluttered up the universe. It undermined faith and it had got Algernon lever into a devil of a fix. It was his sister's fault, actually. She would go, in spite of his advice, up to the moon to the UN Sanitarium in Aristarchus. Weaver's sister, a big-framed, definite woman, had a weak heart and 75 superfluous pounds of fat. Doctors had told her that she would live 20 years longer on the moon. Therefore, she went and survived the trip and thrived in the germ-free atmosphere, weighing just one-sixth of her former 110 pounds. Once she was there, Weaver could hardly escape visiting her. Harriet was a widow with large resources and Weaver was her only near relative. It was necessary. It was prudent for him to keep on her good side. Moreover, he had his family feeling. He did not like it. Not a minute of it. Not the incredible trip, rising till the earth lay below like a botched model of itself. Not the silent mausoleum of the moon. But he dully admired Harriet's spacious room in the sanitarium, the recreation rooms, the auditorium. Space-suited, he walked with her in the cold earth-light. He attended her on the excursion trip to Lay Field, the interstellar rocket-base on the far side of the moon. The alien ship was there. All angles and planes. It came from Zeta Aurega. They told him it was the second foreign ship to visit Sol. Most of the crew had been ferried down to earth as they were inspecting the people. Without approval, Weaver was sure. Meanwhile, the remaining crewman would be pleased to have the sanitarium party inspect him. They went aboard. Harriet and two other women and six men counting the guide and Weaver. The ship was a red-lit cavern. The crewman turned out to be a hairy horror of three-foot headless lump shaped like an eggplant, supported by four splayed legs and with an indefinite number of tentacles wriggling below the stalked eyes. They're more like us than you think, said the guide. They're mammals. They have a nervous organization very like ours. They're susceptible to some of our diseases, which is very rare, and they even share some of our minor vices. He opened his kit and offered the thing a plug of chewing tobacco which was refused with much tentacle waving, and a cigar which was accepted. The creature stuck the cigar into the pointed tip of its body with six beady black eyes, lit it with some sort of flameless lighter and puffed clouds of smoke like a volcano. And of course as you see there are oxygen breathers, the guide finished. The atmosphere in the ship here is almost identical to our own. We could breathe it without any discomfort whatever. Then why don't we Weaver thought irritably? He had been forced to wear either a breathing mask or a pressure suit all the time he had been on the moon except when he had been in his own room at the sanatorium and his post-nasal drip was unmistakably maturing into a cold. He had been stifling sneezes for the last half hour. He was roused by a commotion up ahead. Someone was on the floor and the others were crowding around. Help me carry her," said the guide's voice sharply in his earphones. We can't treat her here. What is she a heart case? Good Lord, clear the way there, will you?" Weaver hurried up, struck by a sharp suspicion. Indeed, it was Harriet who was being carried out, and a good thing he thought that they didn't have to support her full weight. He wondered vaguely if she would die before they got her to a doctor. He could not give this thought his full attention or feel as much fraternal anxiety as he ought because he had to sneeze. The others had crowded out into the red-lit space of the control room where the airlock was. Weaver stopped and frantically tugged his arm free of the rubber-royd sleeve. The repressed spasm was an acute agony in his nose and throat. He fumbled the handkerchief out of his pocket, thrust his hand up under the helmet and blissfully let go. His eyes were watering. He wiped them hurriedly, put the handkerchief away, worked his arm back into the sleeve, and looked around to see what had become of the others. The airlock door was closed, and there was no one in the room but the hairy eggplant shape of the oregan still puffing the oregan did not turn, but then which was its front or back? The beady black eyes regarded him without expression. Weaver started forward. He got nearly to the airlock before a cluster of hairy tentacles barred his way. He said indignantly, Let me out, you monster! Let me out, you hear! The creature stood stock still in an infuriating attitude until a little light on the wall changed from orange to red violet. Then it crossed to the control board, did something of the lock swung open. Well, I should think so, said Weaver. He stepped forward again, but his eyes were beginning to water. There was an intolerable tickling far back in his nostrils. He was going to—he was eyes squeezed shut. His whole body contorted with effort. He raised his arm to begin the desperate race once more. His hand brushed against something. His kit slung just above his waist. There were handkerchiefs in the kit, he recalled suddenly, and he was in the air. He tugged the kit open, fumbled and found a handkerchief. He zipped open the closure of his helmet and tilted the helmet back. He brought up the handkerchief and gave himself over to spasm. He was startled by a horse boom as if someone had scraped the strings of an amplified bull fiddle. He looked around blinking and discovered that the sound was coming from the oregan. The monster with its tentacles tightly curled around the tip of its body was scuttling into the corridor. As Weaver and a sheet of metal slid across the doorway. More boomings came shortly from a source Weaver finally identified as a grill over the control panels. He took a step that way, then changed his mind and turned back towards the airlock. Just as he reached the nearer airlock door, the farther one swung open and an instant torrent of wind thrust him outward. Strangling, Weaver grabbed desperately at the door frame as it went by. He swung with a sickening thud into the inner wall, but he went on and pulled himself back inside. The force of the wind was dropping rapidly. So was the air pressure. Ragged black blotches swam before Weaver's eyes. He fumbled with his helmet trying to swing it back over his head, but it stubbornly remained where it was. The blow when he struck the airlock wall, he thought dimly, it must have bent the helmet so that it would not fit into its grooves. He forced himself across the room toward the faint gleam of the oregan control board, shaped like a double horseshoe around the two lattice-topped stools and bristling with levers, knobs, and sliding panels. One of these he knew controlled the airlock. He slapped blindly at them, pulling, pushing, turning as many as he could reach. Then the floor reeled under him and as he fell toward it, changed into a soft gray, endless mist. When he awoke the airlock door was closed, his lungs were gratefully full of air. The oregan was nowhere to be seen. The door behind which he had disappeared was there. Weaver got up, stripped off his spacesuit, and by hammering with the sole of one of his boots managed to straighten out the dent in the back of the helmet. He put the suit back on then looked doubtfully at the control board. It wouldn't do to go on pulling things at random. He might cause some damage. Tentatively he pushed a slide he remembered touching before. When nothing happened he pushed it back. He tried a knob. Then a lever. The inner door of the airlock swung open. Weaver marched into it, took one look through the viewport set in the outer door and scrambled back out. He closed the airlock again and thought a minute. In the center of each horseshoe curve of the control board was a gray translucent disc with six buttons under it. They might, Weaver thought, be television screens. He pressed the first button under one of them and the screen lighted up. He pressed the second button, then all the others in turn. They all showed him the same thing, the view he had seen the viewport in the airlock, stars and nothing but stars. The moon, incredibly, had disappeared. He was in space. His first thought when he was able to think correctly again was to find the Aragon and make him put things right. He tried all the remaining knobs and levers and buttons on the control board reckless of consequences until the door slid open again. Then he went down the corridor and found the Aragon. The creature was lying shaped thing over its head, tubes trailing from it to an open cabinet in the wall. It was dead, dead and decaying. He searched the ship. He found storerooms with cylinders and bales of stuff that looked as if it might possibly be food. He found the engine room with great piles of outlandishly sculptured metal and winking lights and swinging meter needles. But he was the only living thing on board. The view from all six directions in the control screens and in the ship's direct viewports alike was exactly the same. The stars, like dandruff on Weaver's blue-surge suit. No one of them apparently any nearer than the others. No way to tell which if any of them was his own. The smell of the dead creature was all through the ship. Weaver closed his helmet against it and remembered that the air in his suit tank would not last forever. He lugged the corpse out to the airlock, closed the inner door on it and counter-won. It was hard for him to accept the obvious explanation of the Euregan's death, but he finally came to it. He recalled something the guide had said about the Euregan's susceptibility to earthly infections. That must have been it. That had been why the creature had bellowed and run to seal itself off from him. It was all his fault. If he had not sneezed with his helmet open, the Euregan would not be dead. He would not be marooned in space, and the other Euregans down on Earth would not be marooned there. Though they, he decided wistfully, would probably get home sooner or later. They knew where home was. As far as he could, he made himself master of the ship and its contents. He discovered by arduous trial an error which of the supposed foods in the storeroom he could eat safely, which would make him sick and which were not foods at all. He found out which of the control-boards knobs and levers controlled the engines and he shut them off. He studied around him, hoping to see some change. After nearly a month it happened. One star grew from a brilliant pinpoint to a tiny disk and each time he awoke it was larger. Weaver took counsel with himself and pasted a small piece of transparent red tape over the place on the telescreen where the star appeared. He scratched a mark to show where the star was on each of three succeeding days. The trail crawled diagonally down toward the bottom of the screen. There was nothing about astrogation, but he knew that if he were heading toward a star it ought to stay in the same place on his screen. He turned on the engines and swung the steering arm downward. The star crawled back toward the center of the screen then went past. Weaver painstakingly brought it back and so in parsec long zig-zags he held his course. The star was now increasing alarmingly in brightness. It occurred to Weaver that he must be traveling with some light. He had no sensation of movement at all. There was a position on the scale around the steering arm that he thought would put the engines into reverse. He tried it, and now he scratched the apparent size of the star into the red tape. First it grew by leaps and bounds, then more slowly, then hardly at all. Weaver shut off the engines again and waited. The star had planets. He noted their passage in the telescreen, marked their apparent courses and blithely set himself to land on the surface seemed to be nearest. He was totally ignorant of orbits. He simply centered his planet on the screen as he had done with the star, found that it was receding from him and began to run it down. He came in too fast the first time, tore through the atmosphere like a lost soul and frantically out again, sweating in the control room's sudden heat. He turned out in space and carefully adjusted his speed so that ship and planet drifted softly together. Gently, he had been doing this all his life. Weaver took the ship down upon a continent of rolling greens and browns, landed it without a jar, saw the landscape begin to tilt as he stepped into the airlock and barely got outside before the ship rolled ten thousand feet down a gorge he had not noticed and smashed itself into a powdering of fragments. Two days later he began turning into a god. Section 2 They had put him into a kind of seat at the end of a long rotating arm, counter-weighted at the opposite side of the air-car proper, and the whole affair swung gently in an eccentric path around and around and up and down as the air-car moved very slowly forward through the village. All the houses were faced with broad wooden balconies, stained blood red and turquoise, umber and yellow, gold and pale green, and all of these were crowded to bursting with the blue and white horny chests and the big-eyed faces of the bug-things. Weaver swung in his revolving seat past first one level and another and the twittering voices burst around him like the stars of a Fourth of July rocket. This was the fifth village they had visited since the bug-things had found him wandering in the mountains. At the first one he had been probed, examined and twittered over interminably. Then the air-car had arrived. They had strapped him into this ridiculous seat and begun what looked very much like a painful tour. Other air-cars without the revolving arm proceeded and followed him. The slowly following cars and their riders were gay with very colored streamers. Every now and then one of the bug-things in the cars would raise a pistol-like object to fire a pinkish streak that spread out high in the air and became a gently descending, defusing cloud of rosy dust and always the twittering rose and fell. Rose and fell as Weaver revolved at the end of the swinging arm. One had to remember, he reminded himself, that earthly parallels did not necessarily apply. It was undignified certainly to be revolving like a child on a merry-go-round while these crowds glared with bright alien eyes. But the important thing was that they had not once offered him any violence. They had not even put him into the absurd revolving seat by force. They had led him to it gently with a great deal of gesturing and twittering explanation. And if their faces were almost nauseatingly unpleasant with the constantly moving complexity of parts that he had seen in live lobsters, well, that proved nothing except that they were not human. Later perhaps he could persuade them to wear masks. It was a holiday. A great occasion. Everything testified to that. The colored streamers, the clouds of rosy dust-like sky rockets, the crowds of people lined up to await him. And why not? Clearly they had never before seen a man. He was unique. A personage to be honored. A visitor descended from the heavens, clothed in fire and glory like the Spaniards among the Aztecs, he thought. Weaver began to feel gratified, his ego expanding. Experimentally he waved to the massed ranks of bug things as he passed them. A new explosion of twittering broke out, and a forest of twig-like arms waved back at him. They seemed to regard him with respect. Thank you," said Weaver graciously. Thank you. In the morning there were crowds massed outside the building where he had slept, but they did not put him into the air-car with the revolving arm again. Instead four new ones came into his room after he had eaten the strange red and orange fruits that were all of the bug diet he could stomach, and began to twitter very seriously at him while pointing to various objects, parts of their bodies, the walls while Weaver grasped the idea that he was being instructed. He was willing to cooperate, but he did not suppose for a moment that he could master the bird-like sounds they made. Instead he took an old envelope and a stub of pencil from his pocket and wrote the English word for each thing they pointed out. Orange, he wrote. It was not an orange, but the color was the same at any rate. Thorax. Wall. Man. Mandibles. In the afternoon they brought a machine with staring lenses and bright lights. Weaver guessed that he was being televised. He put a hand on the nearest bug thing's shoulder and smiled for his audience. Later, after he had eaten again, they went on with the language lesson. Now it was Weaver who taught and they who learned. This Weaver felt was as it should be. These creatures were not men, he told himself. He would give himself no illusions on that score, but they might still be capable of doing things that he had to teach. He could do a great deal of good even if it turned out that he could never return to earth. He rather suspected they had no spaceships. There was something about their life, the small villages, the slowly drifting air-cars, the absence of noise and smell and dirt that somehow it did not fit with the idea of space travel. As soon as he was able he asked them about it. No, they had never traveled beyond their own planet. It was a great thing. Perhaps he could teach them how sometime. As their command of written English improved he catechized them about themselves and their planet. The world, as he knew already, was much like earth as to atmosphere, gravity and mean temperature. It occurred to him briefly that he had been lucky to hit upon such a world but the thought did not stick. He had no way of knowing just how improbable his luck had been. They themselves were, as he had thought, simple beings. They had a written history of some 12,000 of their years which he estimated to be about 9,000 of his. Their technical accomplishments he had to grant equaled earths and in some cases surpassed them. Their social organization was either so complex that it escaped him altogether or unbelievably simple. They did not so far as he could discover have any political divisions. They did not make war. They were egg-layers and they controlled their populations simply because of hatching only as many eggs were needed to replace their natural losses. Just when it first struck Weaver that he was their appointed ruler it would be hard to say. It began perhaps that afternoon in the air-car or a few days later when he made his first timid request for a house of his own. The request was eagerly granted and he was asked how he would like the house constructed. Half timidly he drew sketches of his own suburban home in Schenectady and the warms of them working together down to the hardwood floors and the pneumatic furniture and the picture moldings and the lamp shades. Or perhaps the idea crystallized when he asked to see some of their native dances and within an hour the dancers assembled on his lawn five hundred of them and performed until sundown. At any rate nothing could have been more clearly correct once he had grasped the idea. He was a man alone in a world that he should lead. Indeed it was his duty. They were poor things but they were malleable in his hands. It was a great adventure. Who knew how far he might not bring them. Weaver embarked on a tour of the planet taking with him two of the bug things as guides and a third as pilot and personal servant. Their names in their own tongue he had not bothered to ask. He had christened them Mark, Luke and John. The trip was entirely enjoyable. He was met everywhere by the same throngs, the same delight and enthusiasm as before and between villages there seemed to be nothing on the planet that could be called a city. The rolling green countryside dotted with bouquets of yellow and orange flowered trees was most soothing to the eye. Weaver noted the varieties of strangely shaped and colored plants and the swarms of bright flying things and began an abortive collection. He had to give it up for the present. There were too many things to study. He looked forward to a few books to be compiled later when he had time for the guidance of earthmen at some future date. The flora of Teranova. The fauna of Teranova. All that was in the distant future. Now he was chiefly concerned with the Teranovens themselves, how they lived, what they thought, what sort of primitive religion they had and so on. He had to give up the wealth of his guides and threw them of the villagers they met. And the more he learned, the more agitated he became. But this is monstrous, he wrote indignantly to Mark and Luke. They had just visited a house inhabited by seventeen males and twelve females. Weaver was now beginning to be able to distinguish the sexes and he had inquired what their relations were. Mark had informed him calmly that they were husbands and wives and when Weaver pointed out that he had written, no, not one to one, all to all, all husband and wife of each other. Mark held Weaver's indignant message up to his eyes with one many-jointed claw while his other three forelimbs gestured uncertainly. Finally he seized the notepad and wrote, Do not understand monstrous, please forgive. They do for more change, so not to make each other have tiredness. Weaver frowned and wrote, Not your religion forbid this? Mark consulted in his own piping tongue with the other two. Finally he surrendered the notepad to Luke who wrote, Do not understand religion to forbid, please excuse. With us many religion, some say spirits in flower, some say in wind and sun, some say in ground. Not say to do this, not to do that. With us all people the same. Tell other what to do. Weaver added another mental note to his already lengthy list. Build churches. He wrote, Tell them this must stop. Mark turned without hesitation to the silently attentive group and translated. He turned back to Weaver and wrote, They ask please what to do now instead of the way they do. Weaver told him they must mate only one to one and for life. To his surprise the translation of this was greeted by unmistakable twitterings of gladness. The members of the adulterous group turned to each other with excited gestures and Weaver saw a pairing off-process begin with much discussion. He asked Mark about it later as they were leaving the village. How is it that they did this thing before for more variety as you say and yet seem so glad to stop? Mark's answer was they very glad to do whatever thing you say. This is a new thing. They are very happy. Weaver mused on this contentedly on the whole but with a small undigested colonel of uneasiness until they reached the next village. Here he found a crowd of Teranovens of both sexes and all ages at a feast of something with a fearful stench. He asked what it was. Mark's answer had better not be revealed. Feeling genuinely sick with revulsion Weaver demanded, Why do they do such an awful thing? It was worse than the other. This time Mark answered without hesitation. They do this like the other for more change. It is not easy to learn to like but they do so not to make themselves have tiredness. There were three more such incidents before they reached the village where they were to sleep that night and Weaver lay awake in his downy bed staring at the faint shimmer of reflected starlight on the carved roof beams and meditating soberly on the unexpected the appalling magnitude of the task that Mark had set for himself. From this he came to consider that small dark colonel of doubt. It was, of course, dreadful to find that his people were so wholly corrupt but that at least was understandable. What he did not understand was the reason they could be so easily weaned from their wickedness. It left him feeling a little off-balance like a man who has hurled himself at his enemy and found him suddenly not there. This reminded him of Jujitsu and this in turn of the ancient Japanese to whom indeed his Terenovans seemed to have many resemblances. Weaver's uneasiness increased. Savage peoples were notoriously devious. They smiled and then thrust knives between your ribs. He felt a sudden prickling coldness at the thought. It was improbable. It was fantastic that they would go to such lengths to gratify his every wish if they meant to kill him, he told himself. And then he remembered the Dionysian rites and a host of other two similar parallels, the King for a day or a year who ruled as an absolute monarch and then was sacrificed. And Weaver remembered with a stab of panic, usually eaten. He had been on Terenova for a little over a month by the local calendar. What was his term of office to be? Two months? Six? A year? Ten years? He slept little that night, woke late in the morning with dry, irritated eyes and a furred mouth, and spent a silent day inspecting each new batch of natives without comment and shivering inwardly at each motion of the clawed arms of Mark, Luke or John. Toward the evening he came out of his funk at last, when it occurred to him to ask about weapons. He put the query slyly, wording it as if it were a matter of general interest only, and of no great importance. Were they familiar with machines that killed, and if so what varieties did they have? At first Mark did not understand the question. He replied that their machines did not kill, that very long ago they had done so, but that the machines were much better now, very safe and not harmful to anyone. Then, wrote Weaver carefully, you have no machines which are made for the purpose of killing. Mark, Luke and John discussed this with every evidence of excitement. At last Mark wrote, this very new idea to us. But do you have in this world no large dangerous animals which must be killed? How do you kill those things which you eat? No dangerous animals. We kill food things, but not use machines. Give some things food which make them die. Give some no food so they die. Kill some with heat. Some eat alive. Weaver winced with this taste when he read this last and was about to write this must stop. But he thought of oysters and decided to reserve judgment. After all, it had been foolish of him to be frightened last night. He had been carried away by a chance comparison which calmly considered was superficial and absurd. These people were utterly peaceful, in fact, spineless. He wrote, take the air-car up farther so that I can see this village from above. He signaled John to stop when they had reached a height of a few hundred feet. From this elevation he could see the village spread out beneath him like an architect's model, the neat cross-hatching of narrow streets separating the hollow of rooftops dotted with the myriad captive balloons launched in honor of his appearance. The village lay in the gentle hollow of a wide valley surrounded by the equally gentle slopes of hills. To his right it followed the bank of a far-sized river. In the other three directions the checkered pattern ended in a careless, irregular outline and was replaced by the larger pattern of cultivated fields. It was a good sight, the river for power, sanitation, and transportation, the hills for a sheltered climate. He saw suddenly in complete sharp detail how it would be. The trip is over, he wrote with sudden decision. We will stay here and build a city. Section 3 The most difficult part was the number of things he had to learn. There was no trouble about anything he wanted done by others. He simply commanded and that was the end of it. But the massive knowledge about the Taranovans and their world before he came appalled him, not only by its sheer bulk, but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New Washington, later New Jerusalem, he was still bothered by a little doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the Taranovans so that finally he would understand them completely and the doubt would be gone. Eventually he confessed to himself that the task was impossible. He was 47 years old. He had perhaps 30 years ahead of him and it was not as if he were able to devote them solely to study. There was the written history of the Taranovans which covered minutely a period of 9,000 years, though not completely. There were periods and places which seemed to have left no adequate records of themselves. The natives had no reasonable explanation of this phenomenon. They simply said that the keeping of histories sometimes went out of fashion. Then there was the biology of Taranovans and the countless other organisms of the planet. Simply to catalog them and give them English names as he had set out to do would have occupied him for the rest of his lifetime. There was the complex and puzzling field of social relations. Here again everything seemed to be an unaccountable flux even though the overall pattern remained the same and seemed as rigid as any primitive peoples. There was physics which presented exasperating difficulties of translation. There was engineering. There was medicine. There was economics. When he finally gave it up it was not so much because of simple arithmetical impossibility of the job as because he realized that it didn't matter. For a time he had been tempted away from the logical attitude towards these savages of his. A foolish weakness of the sort that had given him that ridiculous hour or two when he now dimly recalled he had been afraid of the Taranovans. Afraid of all things that they were fattening him up for the sacrifice. Whereas it was clear enough certainly that the former state of the Taranovans their incomprehensible society and language and customs simply had no practical importance. He was changing all that. When he was through they would be what he had made them. No more and no less. It was strange looking back to realize how little he had seen of his destiny there at the beginning. Timid little man he thought half in amusement half contemptuously nervous and fearful seeing things small. Build me a house like the one I had in Skednactity. They had built a palace. No. A temple. And a city. And they were building him a world, a planet that would be his to the last atom when it was done. A corner of the universe that was Algernon James Weaver. He recalled that in the beginning he had felt almost like these creatures' servant. Public servant he had thought with self-righteous lukewarm pleasure. He had seen himself as one who built for others. The more virtuous because those others were not even men. But it was not he who built. They built. And for him. It was strange he thought again that he should not have seen it from the first for it was perfectly clear and all of a pattern. The marriage laws. Thou shalt not live in adultery. The dietary laws. Thou shalt not eat that which is unclean. And the logical concomitant, the law of worship. Thou shalt have no gods before me. The apostles Mark, Luke and John, later Matthew, Philip, Peter, Simon, Andrew, James, Bartholomew and Thomas. He had a feeling that something was wrong with the list besides the omission of Judas. Unluckily he had no Bible. But it was really an academic question. They were his apostles. Not that others. The pattern repeated itself he thought but with variations. He understood now why he had shelved the project of Christianizing the natives although one of his first acts had been sex. He had told himself at first that it was best to wait until he had put down from memory the salient parts of the Holy Bible. Genesis say, the better known Psalms and a condensed version of the Gospels, leaving out all the bigots and the Jewish tribal history and awkward things like the songs of Solomon. Thy mandibles are like pomegranates. No, it wouldn't do. And of course he had never found time to rack his brains for the passages that eluded him. But all of that had been merely a sub-refuge to soothe his conscience while he slowly felt his way into his new role. Now it was almost absurdly simple. He was writing his own Holy Book or rather Luke Thomas and a core of assistance were putting it together from his previous utterances to be edited by him later. The uneasy rustling of chitness arms against white robes recalled him from his meditation. The swarm of priests, altar boys and the rest of his retinue was still gathering around waiting until he should deign to notice them again. Really, God thought with annoyance, this wool-gathering at such a moment. The worshippers were masked in the temple. A low excited twittering rose from them as he appeared and walked into the beam of the spotlight. The dark lenses of television cameras were focused on him from every part of the balcony at the rear of the hall. The microphones were ready. Weaver walked forward as the congregation knelt and waited an impressive moment and spread his hands in the gesture that meant, rise, my children. Simon previously coached, translated, the congregation rose again, rustling, and then was still. At a signal from Simon, the choir began a scurrying and screeching which the disciples warranted to be music, religious music, composed to fit the requirements he had laid down. Weaver endured it, thinking that some changes must come slowly. The hymn wailed to an end and Weaver turned, leaning carefully forward toward the microphones. My children, he began and waited for Solomon's twittering translation. You have sinned greatly, twitter, and in many ways, twitter, but I have come among you, twitter, to redeem your sins, twitter, and make them as though they had never been, twitter. He went on to the end, speaking carefully and sonorously. It was not a long sermon, but he considered himself that it was meaty. At the end of it he stepped back a pace and folded his arms in the long white silk sleeves across his chest. Simon took over now, and so far as Weaver could judge, he did well. He recited a litany which Weaver had taught him, indicating by gestures that the congregation was to repeat after him every second speech. The low chirping welled from the hall, a comforting warming sound, almost like the responses of a human congregation. Weaver felt tears welling to his eyes, and he restrained himself from weeping openly only by a gigantic effort. After all, he was a God of wrath. But the love which swept towards him at this moment was a powerful thing to gain say. When it was all over, he went back to his sanctum, dismissed all his retinue except his regular assistance, and removed the ceremonial robes. The people responded well, he said, I am pleased. Simon said, they will work hard to please you, and you bring great happiness to them. That is well, said Weaver. He sat down behind his great desk while the others stood attentively below him in the sunken four-section of the sanctum. What business have you for me today? There is the matter of the novel, Master said Mark. He stepped forward, mounted the single step to Weaver's dais, and laid a sheaf of papers on the desk. This is a preliminary attempt which one called Peter Smith has made with my unworthy help. I will read it later, Weaver told him. It was poor stuff, no doubt. What else could one expect? But it was a start. He would tell them what was wrong with it, and they would try again. Literary criticism, armaments, tariffs, manners, there was no end to it. What else? Luke stepped forward. The plans for the large weapons you commanded your servants to design, Master. He put three large sheets of parchment on the desk. Weaver looked at the neat tracery on the first and frowned. You may come near me, he said. Show me how these are meant to operate. Luke pointed to the first drawing. This is the barrel of the weapon, Master, he said. As you commanded, it is rifled so that the missile will spin. Here the missile is inserted at the breach according to your direction. Here is the mechanism which turns and aims the weapon as you commanded. It is shown in great detail on this second sheet. The barrel itself. It is hollow and filled with explosive powder as you ordered, and there is in the tip a device which will attract it to the target. Weaver gravely knotted. Has it been tested? In models only, Master. If you direct, the construction will begin at once. Good. Proceed. How many of these can you make for me within a month? Luke hesitated. Few, Master, at first, all must be done by hand methods. Like many at a time. Fifty or even a hundred in one month. But for the first two or three months, Master, two weapons in a month is all that your unworthy servants can do. Very well, said Weaver. See to it. He turned and examined the large globe of the planet which stood on his desk. Here was another product of his genius. The Taranovans had scarcely had maps worthy of the name before his coming. The three major continents trailed downward like fleshy leaves from the North Pole. He had called them America, Europe, and Asia. And they were so lettered on the globe. In the southern hemisphere, besides the tips of Europe and Asia and fully a third of America, there was a fourth continent shaped rather like a hat which he had called Australia. There was no Africa on Taranova, but that was small loss. Weaver had never thought highly of Africa. The planet itself, according to the experts who had been assigned the problem, was a little more than 10,000 miles in diameter. The land area, weaver thought, probably amounted to more than 50 million square miles. It was a great deal to defend, but it must be done. Here is your next assignment, he told Luke. Put a team to work on selecting and preparing sites for these guns when they are built. There must be one in every thousand square miles. Luke bowed and took the plans away. For otherwise, weaver thought, somberly, another ship might land some day, and how could I trust not to welcome it? Sunlight gleamed brilliantly from the broad white marble plaza beyond the tall portico. Looking through the windows, he could see the enormous block of stone in the center of the plaza and the tiny robot air car hovering near it and the tiny ant shapes of the crowd on the opposite side. Beyond, the sky was a clear faultless blue. Are you ready now, master? asked Luke. Weaver tested his limbs. They were rigid and almost without sensation. He could not move them so much as a fraction of an inch. Even his lips were as stiff as that marble outside. Only the fingers of his right hand clutching a pen felt as if they belonged to him. A metal frame supported a notepad where his hand could reach it. Then he wrote, yes, proceed with the statue. Luke was holding a tiny torpedo shaped object that moved freely at the end of a long, jointed metal arm. He moved it tentatively toward Weaver's left side. Outside the hovering air car duplicated the motion. The grinder at its tip bit with a screech into the side of the huge stone. Weaver watched, feeling no discomfort. The drug Luke had injected was working perfectly. Luke moved the pantograph pointer again and again until it touched Weaver's robed body. With every motion the air car bored a tunnel into the stone to the exact depth required and backed out again. Slowly a form was beginning to emerge. The distant screech of the grinder was muffled and not unpleasant. Weaver felt a trifle sleepy. The top of one extended arm was done. The air car moved over and began the other, leaving the head still buried in stone. After this Weaver thought he could rest. His cities were built. His churches founded. His guns built and tested. His people trained. The Teranovens were as civilized as he could make them in one generation. They had literary societies, news stands, stock markets, leisure and working classes, baseball leagues, armies. They had to give up their barbaric comfort, of course, so much the better. Life was real. Life was earnest. Weaver had taught them that. The mechanism of his government ran smoothly. It would continue to run with only an occasional guiding touch. This was his last major task. The Monument. Something to remember me by. He thought drowsily, myself in stone, long after I am gone. That will keep them to my ways, even if they should be tempted. To them I will still be here, standing over them gigantic, imperishable. They will still have something to worship. Stone dust was obscuring the figure now, glittering in the sunlight. Luke undercut a huge block of the stone and it fell turning lazily and crashed on the pavement. Robot tractors darted out to haul the pieces away. Weaver was glad it was Luke whose hand was guiding the pantograph, the bright, efficient younger generation. They had been together a long time, Luke and he, almost ten years. He knew Luke as if he were a human being, understood him as if he were a person, and Luke knew him better than any of the rest, knew his smiles and his frowns and all his moods. It had been a good life. He had done all the things he set out to do, and he had done them in his own time and his own way. At this distance it was almost impossible to believe that he had once been a little man among billions of others conforming to their patterns doing what was expected of him. His free hand was growing tired from holding the pen. When all the rest was done, Luke would freeze that hand also, and then it would be only a minute or so until he could inject the antidote. He scribbled idly, Do you remember the old days before I came, Luke? Very well, master said the apostle, but it seems a long time ago. Yes, Weaver told himself contentedly, just what I was thinking. We understand each other, Luke and I. He wrote, Things are very different now, eh? Very different, master. You made many changes. The people are very grateful to you. He could see the broad outlines of the colossal figure now. The arms in their heavy ecclesiastical sleeves stretched in benediction. The legs firmly planted. But the bowed head was still a rough, featureless, massive stone, not yet shaped. Do you know, Weaver wrote on impulse, that when I first came, I thought for a time that you were savages who might want to eat me. That would startle, Luke, he thought, but Luke said, We all wanted to, very much. But that would have been foolish, master. Then we would not have had all the other things, and besides, there would not have been enough of you for all. The air-car screeched, driving a tunnel along the edge of the part investments. God felt a cold wind down the corridor of time. He had been that close after all. It was only because the natives had been cold bloodedly foresighted that he was still alive. The idea infuriated him, and somehow he was still afraid. He wrote, You never told me of this. You will all do a penance for it. Luke was dabbing the pointer carefully at the bald top of Weaver's head. His horny, complicated face was unpleasantly close. The mandibles, unpleasantly big, even behind his mouth, fell. Luke said, We will very gladly, except that perhaps the new ones will not like it. Weaver felt bewildered. In one corner of his mind he felt a tiny darkness unfolding, the kernel of doubt, forgotten so long, but there all the time, growing larger now, expanding to a ragged, terrifying shape. He wrote, What do you mean? What are the new ones? Luke said, We did not tell you. We knew you would not like it. A spaceship landed in Asia two months ago. There are three people in it. One is sick, but we believe the other two will live. They are very funny people, Master. The pantograph pointer moved down the side of God's nose and another wedge of stone fell into the plaza. They have three long legs and a very little body and a head with one eye in front and one behind. Also they have very funny ideas. They are horrified at the way we live and they are going to change it all around. Weaver's fingers jerked controlably and the words wavered across the page. I don't understand. I don't understand. I hope you are not angry, Master, said Luke. We are very grateful to you. When you came we were desperately bored. There had been no new thing for more than seven thousand years since the last ship came from space. You know that we have not much imagination. We tried to invent new things for ourselves, but we could never think of anything so amusing as the ones you gave us. We will always offer you with gratitude. The pantograph was tracing Weaver's eyelids and then the unfeeling eyes themselves. But all things must end, said Luke. Now we have these others who do not like what you have done so we cannot worship you anymore. And anyway, some of the people are growing tired. It has been ten years, a long time. One thought pierced through the swirling fear in Weaver's mind. The guns built with so much labor, the enormous guns that could throw a shell at miles. The crews, manning them night and day to destroy the first ship that came from space. And they had never meant to use them. Anger fought with caution. He felt peculiarly helpless now, locked up in his own body like a prison. What are you going to do? He scrawled. Nothing that will hurt, Master, said Luke. You remember I told you long ago we had no machines for killing before you came. We use other things, like this drug which Algernon Weaver's hand gripping the pen as a drowning man holds to a stave was moving without his volition. It was scrawling in huge letters over and over. No. No. No. It is too bad we cannot wait, said Luke, but it has to be done before the new ones get here. They would not like it, probably. He let the pointer go and it hung where he had left it with two jointed claws he seized Weaver's hand and straightened it out to match the other, removing the pen. Third claw he thrust a slender needle under the skin. Instantly the hand was as rigid as the rest of Weaver's body. Weaver felt as if the last door had been slammed, the telephone wires cut, the sod thrown on his coffin. This is the way we have decided, said Luke. It is a shame because perhaps these new ones will not be as funny as you after all, but it is the way we have decided. He took up the pantograph pointer again. In the plaza the air-car ground at the huge head outlining the stern mouth, the resolute bearded jaw, helplessly Weaver returned the stare of that remorseless brooding face, the face of a conqueror. End of The Worshipers by Damon Knight